Читать книгу Go Ask the River - Evelyn Eaton - Страница 17

VI

HSUEH YUN WAS SOMETIMES DEPRESSED that the head of the House of Hsueh was now a minor official in a provincial city far from former greatness and from the Emperor’s mind. The mood fell upon him most heavily when envoys arrived from the Court with news of the great world and the happenings about the Golden Throne, gossip of this man’s rise or that old friend’s disgrace.

Then he would wonder uneasily about his own position. Should he have returned to the Capital when he heard that the revolution was crushed and the Emperor and his court were once more at Chang-an, in the Imperial Palace? But that was a long year after the flight and he had found his position in Cheng-tu. There would be the terrible road to retrace and at the end of the desperate journey no assurance that he would get his old appointment back, or any appointment. There were new faces now about the Emperor, and he would favor those who had stayed with him and fought with him, moving from camp to camp, while Hsueh Yun had struck out on his own.

So he had stayed in Cheng-tu when he reached it, for good or for ill, and was now in a post too small, he hoped, for envy to set the great wheel turning which might crush him from Chang-an. He was still in the Emperor’s service, still a government official. His salary was paid from the Imperial Treasury, though not directly to him. It was included in the Governor’s monies, who took the customary offering from it, then it went to the minister in charge of his department and then to his immediate superior. After all of them deducted what was proper, he was left with a scarcity of coin, which he in turn made up by extorting gifts and offerings from his subordinates and demanding bribes and payments from anyone else he could.

It was a living, and when travelers arrived from other parts of the land reporting trouble, raids and counterraids, famine and devastation, he was content with his decision. Shu, when once a man could reach it, seemed an oasis of prosperity and peace.

It was an agricultural district, a wide and fertile plain, sheltered by surrounding mountains, watered by a network of ingenious canals devised by an earlier ruler from the meeting of three other rivers with the turbulent River Min. The earth was rich and lavish. Flowers, cultivated with excessive labor in the Emperor’s gardens in Chang-an, here were growing wild: hibiscus in so many varieties that some of them were still unnamed, the yulan, the mountain tea flower, the rose, the lilac, the aster, the apricot, the peach, and now in courts and gardens, the tree peony, lately introduced from India.

Cultivated crops grew even more lavishly, and if there were no unnatural floods or droughts or locusts to contend with, Shu would continue to be what the poets called it, a paradise, far from the rest of the starving, struggling world. It was far, and it was hard to reach, almost impossible by the eastern road and nearly as cut off from the north and south. But too many refugees were reaching it, desperate and dangerous men, with nothing to lose but the remnant of their broken lives. Too many were crawling these days into Shu. It was beginning to be a disquieting thing.

They were arriving from all quarters, farmers and peasants driven off their lands, soldiers defeated in battle. So far the Province could absorb them, those who were able-bodied and willing to work in the fields. The rest starved or went back where they came from or—how would one know? The world was always full of beggars, the sick, the unfortunate. It was Hsueh Yun’s responsibility to settle the suitable where there was need of them.

So far he had managed to keep them out of the city itself, herded into camps at the other end of the valley. Those who were needed for work inside the gates had special passes, good for the day. At nightfall they must leave. This meant a stream of early morning and late evening traffic to be regulated and supervised, but it also kept Cheng-tu free of disruptive elements.

The City of Silk, Shu’s capital, was a walled enclosure of enough great houses and enough established families to make the nucleus of a good society, a replica in miniature of the glittering life in Chang-an, around the Imperial Court. There was wealth here, as there, but the difference was that here a man of reason with only moderate means could mingle with the best, and, if he lived in one of the less fashionable quarters of the city, maintain a good-sized household, safe and fine about him…if he kept his post. That was the crux of it, the great anxiety…if he lost his post, well, from that no man could recover. That was ruin. Unless he had lands and wealth independent from his office. And what man had those? Not Hsueh Yun.

All this was going through his mind one day as he sat alone in his pavilion. He had come from a meeting with the Governor and some officials from Chang-an. One of these officials he had known in the days when they were studying for their first examination. Now that one was riding high and likely to ride higher. Something that he said made Hsueh Yun uneasy. Was it prudent to neglect his old ties completely, to let himself be entirely forgotten at the Court? On the other hand, would it be prudent to recall himself to attention? So long as his salary continued to arrive with the rest of the Governor’s money, should he not let well enough alone?

Perhaps he might rouse himself to send an occasional poem to the Emperor. In the past his poems were well received. He must be careful not to sound too eager to leave or to stay in Shu. A lament of his uselessness to the Throne and a delicate reproach that his political talents were being overlooked might sound the right note. He could determine later whether he would send it.

He went to his tablets and took up his brush.

In my garden the Wu t’ung tree is tall,

That was a good first line, a mighty oak, yes, that described him well…

roots in the earth, head in the sky.

Too lofty, too remote to prop up the Emperor’s falling house? Nothing explicit, nothing too overt or wounding, yet the inference was there.

O, for the eyes of an Emperorto see the phoenix!

Now how to go on to suggest that the tree might better serve the throne, without being uprooted from the court where it was? He did not want to be transferred, only approved and promoted.

Something about its gifts being wasted, on the ants and bees, that was safe, or perhaps its sure support only the ravens know.

That might do. It said nothing much and yet it suggested troubled loyalty, anxious to be doing more for the Golden Throne. Hmm hmm hmm…its gifts are wasted…he took the brush more firmly toward the inkstone and was about to dip it in when a small commotion beside him swept it from his hand, and two columns of wet lines scrawled themselves beside his own:

In my garden the Wu t’ung tree is tall,birds from the south, birds from the northare nesting there. At every passing wind the branches tremble.

Hung Tu was crouched beside him, leaning over his elbow. She had just completed his quatrain, taking it in a direction he had never meant it to go, and which he could certainly not use for his promotion.

Birds from every quarter? New ideas from wherever they might come? This was a dangerous, revolutionary thought. And whatever winds passed, with the breath of freedom, of unconventional forces sweeping across the narrow decorums of the day?

What bold, preposterous sentiment! How it lifted the whole poem into a proud challenge, instead of the mild resigned reproach he had planned it to contain. How disquieting that a daughter of his house should think in this free way and be able to express it so well!

“The breath of your mouth is evil,” he said sternly, looking at the sleek dark head pressed against his shoulder. She did not answer, but when she lifted her face to look at him there was no fear in her eyes; in his, a mixture of pride and consternation. He was afraid for her and of what the future would bring to a girl with such ideas.

They sat together in silence, in front of the completed scroll. Then he said:

“Well, I see that when the time comes to order the Red Candles and the Flowery Chair, we must look for a very brave husband.”

He laughed, but he was half in earnest. It was going to be difficult to find a husband for his daughter, not only because she had a free spirit—that might be concealed, with luck—but because the times were so uncertain and money so hard to come by that many men, even the wealthiest heads of great families, were deferring marriage for their sons. He himself had not made any betrothal plans or even negotiations for his second son, and he was hoping that his first son’s future father-in-law would not choose this inconvenient moment to press for the wedding date…which he might, since his daughter was ready, had been ready for a year.

Yet how could he enlarge his household to include a son’s wife and the children to follow, when it was harder every day to maintain it as it was? His sons were little help. They had passed their examinations, but so low on the list there was not much hope they would be named to official posts until he could buy the openings for them. Even with gold, with a brilliant record and with influence, it was a lucky chance for a man to set his sons’ feet on the ladder that led to public office, especially in Cheng-tu, and to send them away was expensive and just as competitive.

He sighed so heavily that Hung Tu looked at him with concern and was glad, for once, when Elder Sister sent for her to run an errand, transparently devised to take her out of her father’s sight. If she made him so unhappy when she was with him, she would as soon not be there.